Erik Olin Wright

Erik Olin Wright ( born February 9, 1947 in Berkeley, California) is an American sociologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin.

His academic degrees were the B. A. in Social Studies from Harvard College (1968 ) and BA in History at Balliol College, Oxford ( 1970) and the Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley ( 1976). From 1976 he taught as an assistant professor, in 1980 as an associate professor and since 1983 as a full professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin (Madison / USA).

Wright's main research area is the Marxist class theory. Since 1991 he works at the Real Utopias Project. So far, seven volumes have been published.

2010 Wright was elected President of the American Sociological Association 103. This office he held from 2011 to August 2012.

Writings (selection )

• The Politics of Punishment: A Critical Analysis of Prisons in America, New York: Harper and Row and Harper Colophon Books, 1973.
• Class, Crisis and the State, London: New Left Books, 1978.
• Class Structure and Income Determination, New York: Academic Press, 1979.
• Classes, London: Verso, 1985.
• The Debate on Classes, London: Verso, 1990.
• Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Envisioning Real Utopias, London: Verso, 2010.